Articles

David Chichester is a bluegrass sound engineer whose profession began as a hobby that evolved into a career. He and his wife, Traci, own and operate GBS Productions (Great Big Sound) out of Ohio. He explained his audio company’s name. “Great big was a catch phrase before social media: “great big hair” or “great big”…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine January 1988, Volume 22, Number 7 The parking lot of a shopping center in Carney, Maryland, is neither the choice site to spend a damp Saturday afternoon nor the best place to interview an emerging force in bluegrass music. It doesn’t appear to be a great venue for the sparsely…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine May 1977, Volume 11, Number 11 Northern Bluegrass — A Tangle of Roots and Contradictions The whole idea of Northern bluegrass sounds like a contradiction in terms. Bluegrass is the essence of the rural music of the traditional South. It seems impossible that Northerners, especially those from city and college…

Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1987, Volume 21, Number 10 It’s 1963 in Washington Square Park, downtown Manhattan, on a Sunday afternoon. A young man of seventeen carrying a banjo case is inching his way forward through a crowded circle of bystanders toward its center where several bluegrass musicians are jamming near a fountain….

Photos by Raymond Huffmaster Reprinted from Bluegrass Unlimited Magazine April 1989, Volume 23, Number 10 Bluegrass music as played by Bill Monroe is like no other sound on earth—and setting it on tape is like no other recording session. The sounds of bagpipes, blues, mountain churches and running brooks are echoed in Monroe’s tunes—it’s not…

Finding a new favorite band through a performance or recording is one of the ultimate joys of being a music fan. Last June, at the California Bluegrass Association’s Father’s Day Festival in Grass Valley, the Alum Ridge Boys & Ashlee took the stage Friday afternoon for their first set of the weekend.  Three songs into…